


The Company You Keep

by carolinecrane



Category: Easy A (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 23:18:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinecrane/pseuds/carolinecrane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting Olive to pretend to have sex with him turned out to be the best decision Brandon had ever made, though not for the reason he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Company You Keep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [screamlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/gifts).



> I spent far too long scouring the internet to figure out if Brandon's mystery guy had a canonical name. Turns out it was Josh. With many thanks to Cinderlily for the last minute beta.

Getting Olive to pretend to have sex with him turned out to be the best decision Brandon had ever made, though not for the reason he expected.

He expected the jocks to quit hassling him; that was the whole reason he pretended to hook up with Olive in the first place. And it worked like a charm, better than he expected, even. It worked so well that suddenly he was on the receiving end of fist bumps in the hallway, and it was pretty lame, but it beat getting shoved into lockers by a mile. It beat getting clotheslined or bloody noses or the creepy, less-than-subtle threats in the locker room that Gibbons never took seriously.

All he’d really wanted was for the guys to lay off the gay-bashing, and it had worked better than he hoped. What he didn’t expect was for them to start including him in their straight guy rituals. He didn’t expect invitations to hang out, to be included in conversations in the halls and the locker room about sports and girls and a bunch of other subjects he didn’t actually know anything about.

The first time they invited him to a college party he thought it was a joke. That maybe he’d said something wrong and blown his cover, and they’d figured out that the whole Olive thing had been a lie. But it turned out the party was for real, and that was how Brandon found himself leaning against a wall in a strange house, surrounded by a bunch of college kids he didn’t know and pretending he didn’t wish he was anywhere else.

For the most part his so-called friends had ditched him the second they got to the party, but every so often one of them would wander past to punch him in the shoulder and slur something about how awesome the party was. Brandon nodded every time and raised his Solo cup full of flat beer, and that seemed to be enough to get them to forget he existed again. But eventually one of them was bound to notice he wasn’t hitting on college girls like the rest of them, and he couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t remember once they all sobered up.

After his sixth shoulder punch of the evening – always in the exact same spot, and that was starting to hurt – he sighed and fished his phone out of his pocket, contemplating calling a cab and bailing before any of them remembered him again. Or he could call Olive and offer her five hundred bucks to come make a huge jealous girlfriend scene, just to keep his image intact and give him an excuse to leave. But he was pretty sure she didn’t have a car, which meant cab fare both ways _and_ another gift card.

Brandon was leaning toward calling the cab when someone leaned against the wall next to him, and he glanced over to find a guy he didn’t recognize watching him.

“You came here with those guys, right?” the guy asked, nodding toward a couple of the guys from Brandon’s school in the center of the living room. They were having some sort of chugging contest, it looked like, and Brandon wasn’t an expert or anything, but he was pretty sure that was how freshmen ended up dead from alcohol poisoning.

“Yeah, I mean, sort of.”

“No offense, man, but your friends are lame,” the guy said, but he was smiling when he said it like he didn’t really mind. He had a nice smile – friendly, and the way his eyes kind of sparkled made Brandon’s heart beat a little faster – and Brandon found himself smiling back.

“They’re not my friends. I mean, we go to the same school, but I don’t really hang out with them or anything.”

“So how’d you end up here?”

Brandon shrugged and looked over at the chugging contest just in time to watch the captain of the baseball team pour an entire cup of beer straight down the front of his shirt. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” the guy said, still smiling like he meant it, and when he nodded toward the front door Brandon nodded and followed him away from the party.

It turned out he really did mean it when he said he had time. They spent most of the night just talking, shoulder to shoulder on the hood of what turned out to be the guy’s car. His name was Josh and he was a freshman, and he didn’t bail when he found out Brandon was still in high school. He didn’t even seem to mind all that much; he gave Brandon his number, anyway, asked for Brandon’s too and then asked if it was cool if he called sometime.

When he asked again what Brandon was doing with those guys, Brandon told him the whole story, about school and Gibbons the homophobe and the deal he’d made with Olive. Josh laughed through the part about pretending to have loud, drunken sex, and by the time he was done describing the scene they were both laughing so hard Brandon thought he might throw up.

He was still working on catching his breath when Josh leaned over and kissed him, mouth curved into a smile against Brandon’s lips and one hand on the side of Brandon’s neck. It was sweet and unexpected and all that other romantic bullshit Brandon had never let himself hope for, mainly because he was too busy worrying about surviving high school to think about what it would be like once he was out.

Except he was still in high school, and no matter what kind of chick flick moment he’d landed himself in, he was still going to have to go back there on Monday and pretend to be the guy who’d nailed Olive Penderghast at Melody Bostic’s party.

Still, that didn’t change the fact that his first kiss had turned out to be pretty awesome, and if he couldn’t keep the smile off his face for the rest of the night, Josh didn’t laugh at him any more than he deserved. There were a couple more kisses, then Josh drove him home, leaning across the seat to kiss him one last time and promising to call, and Brandon was glad it was 3:00 am and there was no chance his folks had bothered to wait up.

He was still grinning at school the next day, and when the jock squad assumed he’d ditched them because he hooked up with some college girl, Brandon just grinned a little harder and let them think what they wanted.

He told himself it was cool if Josh didn’t call, but that didn’t stop his pulse from racing every time his cell rang for the rest of the week. When he still hadn’t called by Wednesday Brandon figured Josh had already forgotten about the dorky high school kid he’d picked up at the party, so he was sort of surprised when his phone rang just after 10:00 on Wednesday night.

When he answered Josh launched into a long, rambling apology about an Accounting exam he’d been cramming for, and finally Brandon had to interrupt to pretend that he hadn’t been waiting around for Josh to call. They talked until almost midnight, about Josh’s classes and what Brandon was planning to do when he graduated, about his parents and Josh’s family and everything in between. Talking to Josh was easy, but kind of terrifying at the same time, and Brandon kept expecting his heart to pound right out of his chest every time Josh laughed in his ear.

Brandon tried not to yawn and let on just how tired he was, but finally one escaped, and Josh said, “Sorry, guess I lost track of time. I should let you get some sleep.”

“It’s cool,” Brandon said, but his voice caught on another yawn, and Josh’s laugh this time was low and warm and Brandon felt it in his dick.

“Listen, do you want to go out sometime?”

“Like on a date?” Brandon asked, wincing as soon as the words left his mouth.

Josh didn’t laugh at him this time, though. Instead he said, “Yeah, like a date. I know this place in the city, I think you’ll like it.”

Which was how Brandon found himself on his first official date. He wasn’t about to admit it to Josh, but he’d sort of been counting the night of the party as a kind-of date. And it had been a good kind-of date – awesome, even – but having a real date with Josh was even better.

Josh took him to dinner at a little hole in the wall downtown, but they didn’t get any weird looks when Josh caught his hand over dessert and held on, and nobody said anything when Josh took his hand and led him out of the restaurant once they were done. It felt weird, holding hands with a guy in public, but it felt awesome too, and when Josh dropped him at home for the second time Brandon felt kind of buzzed just from the rush of being…well, sort of out, anyway.

For awhile everything was perfect. They traded texts and phone calls and hung out as often as they could, and the first time Josh took him back to his own apartment at the end of a date, they graduated from kissing to...pretty much everything else. And that was awesome too, better than Brandon expected, because Josh was kind of perfect.

He knew exactly how to make Brandon feel good, at least, and he didn’t mind that Brandon didn’t really know what he was doing. He’d made it sound like he did when he was trying to talk Olive into pretending to sleep with him, but the truth was most of the stuff he knew about sex he learned online.

Practical experience wasn’t something that was all that easy to come by when he was trying to convince the entire student body that he wasn’t gay, but Brandon was a quick study, and it helped that he wasn’t shy about trying new things. There was no way he was going to waste time being shy, not now that he finally had the one thing he’d always figured he’d have to wait until after high school to find.

All thanks to Olive and the homophobic douches who used to use him as a punching bag, and that was never going to stop being funny.

But the thing was, nothing good ever lasted, at least not for Brandon, so he should have known better. He should have seen it coming, because the universe or God or whatever asshole was in charge of this stuff just didn’t like him that much.

They’d been dating for almost two months when it happened. Brandon was spending the weekend on campus, crashing at Josh’s place and if his parents wondered where he was, they didn’t bother calling and asking. So Brandon wasn’t thinking about home, he wasn’t thinking about school or who might be around to see him holding Josh’s hand while they walked across campus to go to some party Josh had heard about.

Mostly he was thinking about the fact that he was going to have to go home tomorrow, and he’d rather go back to Josh’s place than go to some lame party. “Why are we going to this party again?”

Josh laughed at the question and squeezed his hand, then he stopped walking to tug Brandon close and slide his arms around Brandon’s waist. A pair of hands pushed into his back pockets, totally oblivious to who might be walking by, and Brandon felt the same rush he always did when he remembered that Josh wasn’t ashamed to be seen with him.

“Why, you have a better idea?”

“I could probably think of a couple,” Brandon answered, granting Josh a crooked grin and pressing back into the hands still curved around his ass.

Josh grinned at him up close, then he leaned in to fit their mouths together, kissing Brandon slow. Like a promise, and if he didn’t think Brandon was going to hold him to it, he was crazy. Brandon’s hands slid up his back to close around his t-shirt, gripping the cotton tight and holding on like he thought maybe Josh was going to try to get away. He was way too distracted to notice anyone walking by, and when he heard somebody say his name it took a second or two to register the sound.

“Dude, is that Brandon?”

“No way, he…holy shit, it is,” a second voice said, and Brandon pulled away and muttered a soft ‘fuck’ under his breath before he turned to look at a couple of the guys who’d spent most of his high school career trying to fit him into various lockers around school.

“Dude, are you kissing a _dude_?”

“What the fuck, man? I thought you were straight now,” the second one – Mike – said, confusion shifting to disgust, and Brandon had seen that look enough times to know what it meant. He let go of Josh, but when a hand closed around his Brandon didn’t try to shake it off. The damage was already done, after all, and it was kind of cool to know someone had his back for once.

“Yeah, well, I gave it a try, but I guess it didn’t take,” Brandon said, and when Josh squeezed his hand Brandon knew it was a warning. He had a point; sarcasm had never gotten Brandon anywhere with these guys before, but it wasn’t like reasoning with them did much good either.

“Dude, we let you hang out with us,” Devon said, like he was personally offended. Like who Brandon slept with had anything to do with either of them, not that they’d ever understand that. “You totally lied to us.”

“Brandon, let’s just go,” Josh said, tugging on Brandon’s hand now.

Walking away from a fight wasn’t really Brandon’s style. He usually stood up for himself, no matter how hopeless it was, mostly because he didn’t want to give any of those morons the satisfaction of thinking they’d beat him. But Josh was standing next to him now, waiting to take Brandon home and help him forget about the assholes at school and the parents who didn’t give a damn what happened to him.

Except he couldn’t forget, because even if they walked away now he’d still have to face Mike and Devon and a couple dozen other guys just like them on Monday at school, and he wouldn’t have Josh with him then.

“It’s not my fault you were dumb enough to fall for it,” he said as he let Josh pull him away, away from the party and back in the direction of Josh’s place. And maybe he was lucky that they really were as dumb as he’d always said, because by the time they figured out he’d just insulted them he and Josh were too far away to do anything about it.

Or maybe they figured they’d just wait until Monday, when the odds would be in their favor again. They’d never been much for a fair fight, at least not in Brandon’s experience, and he knew as well as Olive how fast news traveled at school, so by the time he showed up Monday morning everybody would know about him and Josh.

“Fuck,” Brandon muttered again, and when the hand around his squeezed even harder he looked over at Josh.

“So I guess those are some of the assholes who used to beat you up.”

“Yeah,” Brandon answered, “them and about twenty of their friends.”

“So what happens Monday?” Josh asked, letting go of Brandon’s hand to fish his keys out of his pocket and let them into his apartment. Brandon waited while he opened the door, then he let Josh push him inside and lock it behind them.

“Depends how personally they decide to take the fact that I turned out to be gay after all. It’s not going to be pretty, that’s for sure.”

“Brandon.” Josh stopped in front of him, hands coming up to cup his cheeks and Brandon wasn’t going to start crying or anything, but it was tough to stand there and look into Josh’s eyes and not totally lose it. “You can’t go back there.”

“What am I supposed to do? I told you, my parents won’t listen to me, and if I tell them I’m gay they’ll just throw me out.”

“So stay here,” Josh said, thumbs tracing Brandon’s cheekbones now, and Brandon blinked a couple times to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

“What?”

“I’m not gonna let you get your ass kicked or worse. If your parents won’t do anything about it, somebody has to.”

Brandon let out a shaky laugh, and he knew it sounded kind of bitter, but he didn’t want to believe that somebody actually _could_ do something about it, not after he’d found the perfect solution and then blown it. Then again, keeping his cover meant not being with Josh, and the thought of that was even worse than the thought of going back to school on Monday.

“So what, I’m just supposed to drop out of school and move in with you? Are you offering to be my sugar daddy?”

Josh snorted a laugh and slid his hands down to the sides of Brandon’s neck, thumbs moving in little circles just behind his ears. “I doubt my student loan would stretch that far. But I’ve got the rent covered, and it’s not like you can’t get a job and pitch in. You’re smart enough to get your GED and start college on schedule. You wouldn’t even have to change your plans.”

“You make it sound easy,” Brandon said, but his heart was hammering hard in his chest, and his fingers shook where they were wrapped around Josh’s wrists.

“It’ll probably be pretty damn hard. Hell, I’ve never lived with anybody before, I can’t promise we won’t want to kill each other in a month. But I love you, and I figure it’s worth a shot.”

“You…love me?” Brandon said, heart stuttering so loud now that he was positive Josh could hear it. But it was the first time anyone had said that to him, other than his parents, maybe, and they weren’t exactly free with the affection.

“What, too much?” Josh asked, nervous all of a sudden, and Brandon wasn’t sure whether to laugh or just kiss him really hard.

In the end he went with kissing, hands leaving Josh’s wrists to slide around his waist and pull him close. When he pulled away again he rested his forehead against Josh’s, just looking for a second before he answered. “Not too much. Not by a long shot.”


End file.
